


the kids aren't alright

by multifanwho



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 13 needs to be mothered and najia is the one to do it, Angst, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Najia POV, captian najia of the good ship thasmin, sonya is a good sister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26901298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multifanwho/pseuds/multifanwho
Summary: Yaz comes home one day and isn't the same. Najia's mothering instinct doesn't stretch to tell her what's wrong but something is. When the Doctor doesn't show up in a while, she figures it out.
Relationships: Thasmin - Relationship, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 16
Kudos: 118





	1. tally of her own

**Author's Note:**

> "yaz is struggling" - mandip gill NYCC 2020

The day Yaz comes home she cries. She cries and she cries in her room but it’s not an outright cry. She sobs and sniffles and all Najia can do is check every few hours that she’s alright. Sonya sees it too and she makes a fair attempt to talk to her about it but leaves Yaz’s room with nothing to report. 

Then the next day the strangest thing happens. Yaz emerges from her room and steals a banana from the fruit bowl, fully dressed in her work clothes ready to go and she smiles at them before she leaves. She does the exact same the next day, the day after that and the day after that. Sonya says she sees Yaz on the beat and she’s fine, she’s normal. But the second she goes behind the door of her bedroom she’s quiet and crying and just… sad. When two weeks of this behaviour has passed- working too weeks straight with only one day off- Najia has to ask. She catches Yaz in the corridor putting her boots on. 

“Aren’t you going to see the Doctor soon sweetheart? Not seen her for a while, is she okay?” Najia asks. She hasn’t seen the weird older blonde around for two weeks now, not even for a quick visit on Yaz’s single day off. 

She can feel her daughter tense at the word, tightening her boot laces with a tense snap.

“The Doctor’s gone.”

Yaz slams the door on her way out. She never does that. Not since she was bullied in school- all the signs are there if she thinks about it. What does she mean ‘the doctor’s gone’? Did they split up? Did something happen to her?

“Mum.” Sonya creeps up behind her with a face full of worry. “What do we do?” 

Najia sighs. Mothers are supposed to know how to fix the problems of their daughters but whatever happened with the mysterious Doctor is so out of the ordinary she has not even an inkling of an idea.

“I’m gonna look in her room.”

“Sonya!” Najia stops her from going straight there. 

“What else are we supposed to do mum? She’s obviously-!”

“You’re not looking without me.” Najia interrupts.

She takes the lead, heading straight for her eldests room. It’s a blatant invasion of her privacy, she knows that but she’s worried, so worried. 

The first thing that hits her is the mess. Sheets of paper scattered all over her floor. Sonya picks one up at the same time as her. The Doctor. They’re all of the Doctor; smiling, concentrating, running, laying down looking up at the sky. There’s a long silver and orange thing that she’s drawn too but Najia can’t make any sense of it. 

“God.” Sonya mutters. 

Najia presses on, trying not to step on and crumble the pieces of paper. She refuses to look for or in Yaz’s diary. She’d only ever  _ ever  _ do that as a very last resort to understand so she searches around her desk while Sonya looks through her clothes and her bed. Under her pillow, Sonya pulls out a blue top with stripes across it. It’s the Doctor’s, even Najia knows that. Mother and daughter share a look of growing concern then continue. In the draw of her desk, Najia finds a calendar. An ordinary looking calendar at first but as she flicks through it Yaz starts to cross off the days. It starts the day she came home crying. 

“Forgot my-” Yaz bursts through her door and starts to explain why she's back until she stops and realises her mum and her sister are in her room looking through her stuff. “What are you- don’t touch that.” She lunges for the shirt still in Sonya’s hand.

“Yaz…” Najia intervenes trying to reach out to keep both her kids safe. 

“Don’t touch that! Don’t touch any of it!” She shouts. 

“Yaz- Yaz!” 

“Don’t touch her stuff!” 

Sonya’s so shocked by her sisters upset that she has to leave. Yaz frantically mutters to herself gathering up the sheets of paper on the floor like she can hide them from ever being seen. Slowly, Najia gets close enough to her to silently rest her hand on her back. It’s enough to make Yaz stop and hide her face in the sheet of paper she’s holding. 

“Come here kid.” Najia tugs on her shirt to get her to come up from the floor. She manages to sit her down on the side of her own bed. 

Najia sits and lets Yaz gather herself. Her breathing gets better, her eyes dry up. She’s worried about her. So worried about this young woman she’s raised crumbling before her eyes. Yaz goes quiet and Najia uses that chance to speak. 

“What’s this sweetheart?” Najia whispers to keep her voice soft and places the calendar in Yaz’s lap. 

“Days.” Yaz mumbles. 

“Since what?” Najia asks. 

Yaz takes a big, deep breath. “Since the Doctor went away.” 

Najia holds in her sigh. The Doctor. It’s always the Doctor. The woman that goes by her title and never her name. 

“You know what, I think it’ll be better if we put this on the front of the fridge.” Najia takes the calendar back with an idea forming in her mind. 

“Why?” Yaz asks. Najia can hear the protectiveness in her voice as well as see it in her eyes. All over a year calendar that she’s been marking. 

“So we can all help keep count.” Najia smiles. Yaz looks at her hesitantly. “Wouldn’t want you to lose track.”

Yaz allows Najia to take the calendar (only just) to put it up on the fridge. Sonya, who was listening through the door, is quick on her heels to follow and Najia is fairly certain that she has something to say, but she doesn’t have time. She takes a magnet from the draw and paces it on the very front of the fridge. 

“What are you doing, that’s just going to make it worse for her?” Sonya hisses. 

Najia takes a pen and writes in big blue letters ‘shopping trip’ on the next day she knows for certain Yaz has off work. A few days after that she writes ‘takeaway movie night’.

She’s not going to be stuck in the past, not moving past that one day, no. She’s going to be counting forward. Forward to small trips out and days with her family to make her feel better. Make her realise that life on Earth continues with the Doctor and Najia will be damned to let her get stranded behind.

“You see?” Najia asks if she’s smart enough to figure out what she’s doing. 

Sonya folds her arms tight across her chest. “It won’t work.” She huffs out. 

“One day, she’s going to stop crossing off the days.” Najia insists. 

Yaz crosses off the boxes every day before she goes to bed without fail. Najia takes her out every day she promises to and she stays in with her and she invites her to events and she encourages her to go to work dinners. For a few months, Najia thinks it’s working. When she’s with her daughter she’s almost like normal, except one day they bump into Yaz’s friends, Ryan and Graham. They ask where she’s been and all Yaz does is walk away, leaving Najia to awkwardly give a reason for her daughter's anti-social behaviour. It restarts then. Sonya tells her she sneaks into Yaz’s room in the middle of the night just to talk to her so she stops crying. 

Najia keeps going with her plan. It takes her a good four months to get back to where they were when they saw Ryan and Graham. Najia even considers going to talk to them about it however she’s so fearful of Yaz finding out and slipping back again that she doesn’t. 

More months pass. So many months pass and Najia thinks she’s won as each season passes. She’s done it and her daughter is happy and safe. Until Sonya wakes her in the middle of the night.

“Mum it’s Yaz.” She whispers so Hakim doesn’t wake up too. 

“What’s happening?” Najia immediately sits up and reaches for her dressing gown and slipper. 

“She’s in the kitchen.” 

Najia sweeps through the flat and finds Yaz staring blankly at the front of the fridge. But yet again, it’s not blank. It’s the same look she’s had in her eyes this whole. A Doctor Shaped look like a shadow that follows her at work and inhibits her when she’s at home. Najia wants to chop off that shadow since it’s doing nothing but drag her down. 

“Yaz love, what is it?” Najia gently approaches her. The whole time Yaz’s eyes don’t move away from the page littered with X’s. 

“Been a year.” Yaz’s voice cracks. 

“Oh, Yaz.” Bubbling with empathetic sadness Najia holds her baby girl to try and absorb some of the emotional pain. She wishes she knew more about the Doctor. Maybe then she would have some answers- mainly the answer as to why the Doctor being gone is taking such a toll. “You act so strong out in the world but you can’t hide it all from me. Don't hide it from me.” She pleads.

"I can't tell you." Yaz blubs. 

“We can get you help.” Najia offers. "Get you feeling normal again?"

“A therapist won’t understand.” Yaz wipes her eyes.

“Of course they will. They’re professionals.” Najia says, begging her kid not to be so closed minded. 

“No, they really won’t.” 

Yaz shrugs Najia off easily and pads back to her room. Najia doesn’t follow since there’s nothing she could possibly say that could help. In reality she doesn’t actually know what’s happened to the Doctor. She’s just gone… which is sometimes worse than having to grieve a death. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHY IS STINKY GREASY PRISON 13 ATTRACTIVE TO ME
> 
> also this wasn't proofread or anything I just took what she said on the panel and RAN


	2. surprise appearance

A year passes. Yaz gets better. Najia forces her to go and spend time with Ryan and Graham as much as she can to face her problems head on rather than ignore them. They help. A lot. A year passes and then another year passes and Yaz is doing well. To an outsider, it looks like nothing happened and no one ever touched her life like the Doctor did. But at home Najia still sees it every day. When she opens a new packet of biscuits it looks like she’s seen a ghost. The way she refuses to get rid of the Doctor’s shirt under her pillow. Every night, the last thing she does before she goes to bed is cross the day off of the calendar that still hangs in the kitchen. Najia lets her keep doing it since she’s learnt that it’s turned into her outlet of grief- remembering the Doctor for a couple of minutes once a night.

Everything is as normal as it can be until one beautiful October evening when Najia is walking home from work. She stops off at the corner shop to buy some candy apples as a treat, just because Yaz has gone on a health kick for work again, and gets home to the flat to find Sonya waiting for her in the hallway.

“Sonya?”

“Mum!” She sighs out with relief that she’s back.

“What is it, what’s wrong?”

“It’s her. It’s the Doctor, she just turned up out of nowhere and now-”

“Where is she?” Najia drops everything needing to know where her daughter is. 

“She’s so upset.” Sonya says. 

That’s all Najia needs to hear to head straight for Yaz’s room. She’s not sure what she’s planning to do since it’s none of her business, but then it is her business because Yaz still lives at home and she’s the one having to help fill the Doctor’s absence. Najia holds herself back from barging straight in and instead listens to Yaz unload all the weight that’s been building on her shoulders for years. Maybe she might actually learn what happened the day she went away. 

_ “When I close my eyes I can still feel you shaking me off your arm insisting you need to go and when you didn’t come back I thought you were dead! But I didn’t at first, no, I spent a whole year of my life holding out hoping that you and your stupid machine got the date wrong and you were coming back. Where have you been? Answer me Doctor or I swear I’ll… I’ll…” _

Yaz’s words tail off into light sobbing as she waits for an answer. Only silence comes and Najia has to ask if Yaz is imaging it- having a mental break but Sonya said she saw her too so unless they’re both losing it the Doctor must not be able to find her tongue. Najia can’t stand and wait any longer and lets herself in, invading whatever moment they’re having. 

“Answer her or I’ll make you-”

“Mum get out!”

Yaz stands between her and the Doctor but the physical barrier isn’t what stops Najia’s rage. She looks unrecognizable. Gone are the rainbows replaced by a red jumpsuit with a black stripe down one side. She’s gaunt and skinnier than she remembers. Face like a ghost and hair that looks like she’s been dunked in a toilet of oil. And the fact that she flinched as Najia approached her, bringing her hands up to her face… what’s happened to her?

“Doctor?” Najia whispers her name.

“Mum I said get out!” Yaz tries to push her. 

“Yasmin Khan!” She raises her voice putting her foot down. After a month of being soft on her, Yaz steps back in surprise giving Najia a clear path to the strange woman. The closer she gets the more specks of dirt and grime she can see on her face and under her fingernails and bloody hell that look in her eyes… she’s so scared. Like a child that doesn’t know their place in the world. “Let’s get you clean, love.” She holds out her hand for the Doctor to take. 

“Hi Yaz’s mum.” The Doctor mumbles. Her lips and voice are cracked, probably from some kind of dehydration. 

“Hi sweetheart.” Najia smiles gently and encourages her to take her hand. “Come on.”

Najia takes her straight to the bathroom, throwing Sonya a wink to say she’s got the situation under control but still her youngest goes to visit her sister. Once in the bathroom the Doctor lets go of Najia’s hand and stands like she doesn’t know what to do. 

“I’m not going to ask anything, I’m not going to lay into you about anything- yet- but you can’t sit down and have a conversation with my Yaz looking and smelling like you do.” Najia says, whipping back the shower curtain. The noise makes the Doctor flinch. 

“I’m not… I don’t… I’m just… I’ve been somewhere very loud.” The Doctor explains and tries to smile. “Noise all the time.”

Najia tries her best not to start asking questions. “Take the clothes off.”

The Doctor sits with her knees tight to her chest as the bath fills up with water. Najia lets the warm water run until the majority of her body is covered, not caring for the water bill or the fact that the bathtub might overflow. Wherever the Doctor’s been she smells and by the red jumpsuit puddled on the floor it must have been some kind of prison, although she doesn’t know what the stripe of symbols down the front mean. She’s not sure about the fact her daughter might be hanging out with a criminal either, and she’s not happy that she’s back after only just getting Yaz into a good headspace- but still it’s better than her being dead. The Doctor herself looks ragged. So tired that Najia doesn’t really know how she managed to even walk herself to the flat. Her bones might break through her skin since she's so skeletal and weak. She looks lost to herself, staring at the tiles like this might just be one great big hallucination but Najia just about manages to get her to wash herself.

“Let’s get you washed shall we?” Najia softly places her hand on the Doctor’s bare bony shoulder to draw her out of wherever she was daydreaming. “That hair looks like it needs some TLC.”

“I didn't mean to hurt Yaz.” She says, still staring forward. 

“One problem at a time love.” 

Like the Doctor is one of her own children she wets her hair and shampoos it. Something also tells her that the Doctor hasn’t had any proper human touch in a while- mainly the goosebumps that are rising on the back of her neck anytime her hand gets close, or maybe it’s just a mothering touch she’s been missing. She’s just about to pour water over her hair to rinse it when Yaz makes an appearance. She doesn’t say anything, just sits on the floor by the bathtub and reaches her arm over the bath for the Doctor to hold her hand. Najia doesn’t realise she’s frozen in time until Yaz looks at her, silently calling her out for staring. She gets back to rinsing her head of hair, using her hand to make sure the soap doesn’t drip down her face and into her eyes. 

“I don’t have any clothes.” The Doctor mutters once Najia says she’ll leave her to get changed. 

“You lost your coat?” Yaz sits up, positively distraught at the loss of something that isn’t even hers. 

“I’ll find something.” Najia says. She leaves as Sonya arrives with a fresh toothbrush. 

Najia gets the Doctor a black shirt with white dots and a pair of her husband's jogging bottoms. It just about fits as an outfit from the glimpse Najia gets of her, and it is really only a glimpse. She doesn’t see her for a while after that but she knows she’s there in the flat hopefully talking things through with Yaz and she hopes that Yaz gets to explain, properly, everything that she’s felt and gone through just as much as the Doctor.

She gets spooked by the Doctor standing in the middle of their kitchen, having thought that she left hours ago. 

“Alright?” Najia carefully approaches the figure in the half dark.

The Doctor turns with the light of the moon making watery eyes glisten. “How many days has it been for her?” 

With a pitiful sigh, Najia takes out the other calendars full of crossed off days out of the cupboard of odd objects next to the sink and somewhat spitefully throws them down on the table. The Doctor stares at them through the waves of freshly washed hair frozen like she can’t comprehend it. 

“You look older.” Najia says her observation out loud. The wrong thing to say, since the Doctor snaps her head around. 

“I am thousands of years older than you could ever possibly imagine.” Her lips shake as she waits for Najia to respond until she can’t anymore. “Do you want to know, Najia? Do you really want to know what happens- what  _ has _ happened when I’ve been with her? The places I take her, the danger I put her in.”

Najia thinks the other woman is ill. Mentally ill but with some of the things she’s seen and heard of she kind of blames that assumption on her brain trying to drag her back into blind ignorance. 

“Is my kid safe around you?” Najia asks, already having a strong sense of the answer but needing a straight answer anyway. 

“No. But she’s happy. Brave. And loved.” 

Najia’s body instinctively becomes so defensive. How dare she imply that her daughter doesn’t feel happy or brave or loved in her own home with her own family since the day she’s been born. 

“I’ve had two years to make her happy without you.” Najia says with a little edge of hatred to her voice. 

“And did you do it?” The Doctor dares to kink an eyebrow. 

“To a degree.” Najia folds her arms across her chest. “You left a big hole in her life, it was hard to try and patch it up without her thinking I was trying to erase you completely.”

The Doctor snaps out of her confrontational trance and becomes that child she saw before, having to sit herself down on a chair to stop the weight of herself dragging her to the floor. Feeling sorry for her Najia takes the seat next to her, placing her hand on top of the pale one clinging onto the paper of the calendars. 

“Najia what should I do? Should I leave and never come back and let her get on with her life?” 

“You’ve already done that once and now you've walked right back in.” Najia says, refusing to tiptoe on eggshells. 

“Stop talking about me behind my back.” 

Yaz shows up looking tired. Exhausted from talking and explaining and probably trying to keep herself together. She joins the two of them, sitting on the other side of the Doctor. To Najia, it looks like she’s choosing her allegiance. 

"So?" The Doctor asks her. 

"Ryan and Graham are coming tomorrow for an explanation."

"Good. That's good." The Doctor pushes hair behind her ears not knowing how else to react. All Najia hears is that this really is her first stop- proving Yaz is her priority. 

"And you're being absolutely truthful about it?" Yaz checks. 

"Why would I lie about that?" 

"Easy, Doctor." Najia intervenes sensing her emotions rising rapidly.

The Doctor blinks again and holds her head in her hands. "Sorry. I'm so used to having my guard up now."

Yaz accepts her apology by hugging her where she sits. Najia just gets more and more questions flooding her mind. Did they hug like this before? Where has the Doctor been? Why would Yaz think she would lie?

"Do you think I could sit in on this explanation?" Najia asks, searching for an answer. 

"She can't know." Yaz mumbles to the Doctor without missing a single beat. 

"Uh- yes she can." Najia replies just a quick. 

"Alright, fine." 

The Doctor gives in. She really  _ really _ gives in, telling details and stories that are truly out of this world. In some ways she’s horrified. In others she’s grateful for having a better understanding of her kid. But in all ways she’s intrigued and completely gets why Yaz was eager to run away with her in the first place and why she was so upset when she left. 


End file.
